The battle over science and science fiction wages on, but today is one of those rare days when science appears to be winning. Various news outlets are reporting that Pfizer has completed successful tests on children between the ages of five and 11. Obviously, that doesn’t mean that the vaccine is right around the corner for our younger kids, but it could be approved before the end of the year.

This comes as more and more children are testing positive for the virus. It’s getting closer and closer to home. My daughter is luckily a part of the vaccinated population, but other children are not. We get a call every day from the school where I work about another person on campus testing positive (they won’t differentiate between students and staff). Those are usually proceeded by an email from our daughter’s school about the number of people testing positive there. These occur daily.

Our daughter plays volleyball and we have instituted a car pool with several other parents and kids to make life easier on all of us. One of the parents tested positive. Her daughter initially tested negative but being quarantined in the same house with someone that is positive can’t be good. She has a younger sister that cannot be vaccinated yet. These are the real considerations at work here. These are the real results from a world where not everyone wants to mask up or give themselves the jab. Based on our dealings with them, I certainly believe both parents and the older children are vaccinated, but that hardly protects younger children.

Meanwhile, the effects on activities that we took for granted when we were younger cannot be overstated. This week is homecoming. The game and their parade are on for now, but the homecoming dance has been cancelled for weeks. Maybe something will be done later in the year. Maybe it won’t. As adults these considerations seem trivial. Who cares about a dance? That’s easy for us to say when we all had those activities when we were younger. It’s hard to get past the anger of knowing this could have been avoided had everyone just acted responsibly. At any rate, maybe Pfizer is taking one significant step in the right direction.